


Coffee and Cigarettes

by MidnightMinx90



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Drabble, Ficlet, Inspired by Music, M/M, One Year Later, Sad, post acIII
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightMinx90/pseuds/MidnightMinx90
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a year since Desmond made his sacrifice.</p><p>Shaun stills sees Desmond in everything around him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffee and Cigarettes

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Coffee and Cigarettes by Michelle Featherstone, which is also the song the fic is based on.

It’s been a year, and every day bears a painful reminder of his loss. The little things he used to enjoy so much, like drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, are things of the past now. Before this had all started, he’d stuck to tea, never getting accustomed to the dark taste of coffee, even if he added lots of milk and sugar.  
Desmond had changed that however, and that was why he didn’t drink it anymore.

He’d stopped with the cigarettes because it had been something of a stress relief during their mission, and during the last couple of weeks he had smoked with Desmond several times.  
So he quit smoking as well.

It still didn’t help one bit, because he felt the need for a smoke when he let his mind wander, thinking about that period of his life.   
Shaun had thrown his coffee machine out the window one morning, satisfied by the sound of it smashing into pieces on the street below.   
He did it because he’d been tired that morning and had made coffee without thinking about it, and as the first sip had scalded his tongue, memories came flooding back.  
So he’d done the only reasonable thing.

***

Alcohol didn’t carry any memories of him; though it did remind Shaun of the fact the Desmond had been a bartender. Had Shaun knows Desmond back then, it would have been different. 

But that wasn’t why Shaun poured out every last drop of alcohol he owned and stopped drinking. It was because he’d tried to drown his sorrows and escape the memories, but had quickly discovered that the dreams he had after drinking always ended up being about Desmond.

So he poured everything down the drain, hoping it would remove at least some of his thoughts. 

***

Shaun knows he must stop thinking about Desmond, or at least try his best not to see Desmond in everything that surrounds him.   
But it’s oh so much easier said than done. 

***

He had tried to bore himself by watching paint dry, because he thought there couldn’t possibly be anything about watching a blue wall dry that would remind him of Desmond.   
It didn’t go as he planned of course.   
Doing nothing allowed for his mind to wander, and no matter what he tried to associate the colour with, it always somehow ended up with something to do with Desmond, however far-fetched it was.

Like the fact that the colour matched the colour of the sky of their last day together and the way it accented Desmond’s eyes.

So he’d tried to throw himself into work, but when he read something historic, he couldn’t help but wonder if Desmond didn’t have an ancestor connected to it, no matter how small that connection might be.

Shaun threw more books across the room than he would ever admit to anyone.

***

Desmond was the only one who knew Shaun played the piano and that he had taken up the guitar as well shortly before he’d met Rebecca and was dragged into their order.   
He had promised Desmond he would play for him when it was all over, though they both had doubted it would ever come to that.

Shaun had even tried to compose something on the piano to explain his feelings and heartache.  
He succeeded, but it was so melancholic and painfully beautiful that he never played it after he finished it.  
So he wrote it down on a piece of paper, named it “Fragment of a Treasure” and hid it away.

Finding music held nothing for him now, he sold his piano and guitar to the first buyer, not caring that he sold it for less than it was worth, because he wanted to get rid of it. 

Shaun tried to change his interests, and stopped buying history books. He tried to find new interests, but no matter how hard he tried, he could never fully get interested in anything he did.

Instead he decided to accept the fact that it takes time to get over someone, even if you’ve only known them for a couple of months. 

***

In the end, Shaun comes to terms with the fact that Desmond will never truly disappear from his memory, even though it will fade given time.  
He just hopes Desmond will never fully disappear, because that would mean Shaun had betrayed his memory and legacy.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sorry at all


End file.
